finest story ever written about a fam- ily and one in which Goethe is left strict- ly to Goethe, prophecy to the proph- ets, and seering to the seers. I don't say that that is where they should necessari- ly be left, but I do say that Thomas Mann is at his best when he leaves them there; when, instead of being a philoso- pher, or a God-seeker, or a latter-day Goethe, he is simply a novelist-the best novelist, when he wants to be, who is writing today. -HAMILTON BASSO cutting observation, its tenderness, which keeps it on the side of life and joy even when it seems most grave, its total avoidance of cliché, its lack of senti- mentality, its deep interest in themes of truth and justice-these elements separate it completely from dead for- mality and generalized emptiness. Grad- ually we realize that Winters is reveal- ing to us flashes of insight into the relationship between man, nature, and man's artifacts (between, for example, the airplane and the night sky and the human watcher who experiences them Y VOR '''lINTERS, whose selected both)-flashes so unexpected that we poems, "The Giant Weapon," has understand rather tardily that what we recently appeared in the New Direc- are reading gives us more of the future tions series "The Poets of the Year," than of the past. has held to unpopular modes of expres- Several poems have a power of evok- sion in poetry and criticism for many ing atmosphere and tension that more years. He has clung to what often "romantic" poets might well envy. "By seemed crotchets, in a time particu- the Road to the Air-Base" is one of larly unfriendly, really, to displays of these, and "Before Disaster, 1932-3" determined individuality. His poetry, is another. Winters teaches English at which at the start adhered to the sever- Leland Stanford, and his subjects are est tenets of Imagism, refused to break often drawn from his professional life. up and deliquesce when Imagism went The limp and leaden academic tone has into a decline. It turned back, instead, not touched these subjects, however. to the stylistic severities of the seven- His passion for integrity comes to have teenth century. There it settled and a searchlight intensity. He loves the there it developed, slowly and very classic bases of life; he suffers when he nearly without listeners, let alone finds these bases absent or broken. His friends and admirers. The fashion for interests appear to be limited only be- what Winters himself has called cause he has made choices; his treat- "chaotic reverie" spread on all sides, ment of his material makes up in height but Winters went on writing and trans- and depth for what it has abandoned in lating, and in 1940 he printed, on his breadth. But are his subjects actually so own press, all of his work he had de- limited? ",r e examine them a second cided he wished to keep, some hundred time and find them surprisingly numer- poems in all. The new volume is much ous. And the problems he deals with, smaller; it contains thirty-three poems, whether abstract, as his insistence upon written in the past fifteen years. "It the worth of learning and discipline, or clearly shows Winters to be one of the concrete, as his defense of a friend on really significant poets of conservative trial for murder, are real problems. tendency now writing in America," his Winters has that rare sense: the cool publisher says. That this conservative power to appraise evil. He does not re- tendency has become so rare ' ject evil, or try to laugh it that it is again almost avant- :\\ ' '\! off, or attempt to streamline g arde is an interestin g fact in /. it into acce p table form. He itself. \ I . "it looks it in the eye and brings How stern and dry, how :: (" ':--=-1\\ - a sober sense of compassion- sharp and narrow these : ' f :-'-... _-: \ ate justice to bear upon it. poems look on the page! ' ___ -- \\ His poem "To a Military Some readers, to whom the ' ÅN-\V" Rifle, 1942" will, I feel, turn looseness of modern verse has become a out to be one of the fine poems produced norm, will be ready and waiting to pin by the war. It is as far removed from the word "neo-classic" to Winters' style the ordinary war poem as a poem can and attitude. But when we examine possibly be and still deal with its subject. this close-grained, coolly detached writ- That Winters should have written this ing, we come upon many delicate yet poem, which is a poem of the future, firm effects which elude this small that he should continue to exist at all, classification. Winters' general form that he should have persisted in his way and tone lend themselves to the didac- of writing until the turn of the wheel tic poem and the elegy, and didac- brought him back as "modern"-these tic and elegiac poems are here, but with facts should delight us. They are proof a difference. 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